The Meyerhoff Scholarship Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a multifaceted, strengths based approach to intervention and research that has made great strides in increasing the number of African American students who earn Ph.D.s or M.D./Ph.D.s and pursue research careers in biomedical science. Now in its 16th year, the program has 261 students currently enrolled and so far it has graduated more than 400 students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). A very high percentage of graduates have gone on to pursue Ph.D. and M.D. /Ph.D. degrees. The program incorporates 15 different components, all geared toward supporting students' success as undergraduates and leading to a Ph.D. or M.D. /Ph.D. and a research career. Previous studies indicated that the Meyerhoff Program overall increases the desired outcomes. This proposal uses quantitative and qualitative methods to begin to dissect the success of the program to delineate the student characteristics and program features that are most important to pursuit and completion of a STEM Ph.D. We have two specific aims. First, we want to provide further evidence about program effectiveness, including what types of students receive the most benefit from the program. We will address these questions: (1) will African American Meyerhoff students achieve greater STEM Ph.D. outcomes than comparison students when stringent statistical controls! Are applied; and (2) does the Meyerhoff Program have a greater positive impact on underrepresented j minority students (African Americans) than on Asian American and Caucasian students.
Our second aim i s to investigate how the program works by studying: (3) do Meyerhoff students who perceive greater benefit from program components achieve more positive STEM Ph.D. outcomes; (4) what characteristics (high school preparation, high school GPA, SAT, parental SES, research proclivity, etc.) of students are the strongest predictors of STEM Ph.D. outcomes for Meyerhoff program participants and is this because those characteristics lead to greater perceived benefit from the program; (5) do Meyerhoff students who participate in STEM research intensive summer internships achieve more positive STEM Ph.D. outcomes than those who do not; and (6) do Meyerhoff students who have sustained research experience in on-campus STEM research labs achieve more positive STEM Ph.D. outcomes than those who do not. ? ? ?
The primary emphasis of the Meyerhoff Scholarship Program is to increase the number ofunderrepresented minority scientists and biomedical researchers. Large numbers of AfricanAmerican graduates of the program have entered and completed science; technology; engineeringand mathematics PhDs to date. Thus; the findings of the research will have important implicationsfor programmatic and policy efforts to enhance the number of minority scientists in our nation.
